Focusing is a seven step body-oriented process for self-awareness, emotional healing and the promotion of well-being.  It is a series for tuning into what is happening inside us and is a powerful catalyst for personal growth, insight, and change.

Benefits

• Insight/Clarity
• Problem-solving
• Healing inner conflicts
• Stress reduction/problem-solving

• Self-knowledge
• Unblocking creativity
• Spiritual/intuition development.
• Healing physical ailments/illnesses

Focusing Steps

Clear A Space

Prepare an inner space so you can begin to work with your felt sense. Ask your body ‘how are you’: “Is there anything coming between you and really feeling fine?” Greet each concern that comes. Put each one aside, at the right distance. Except for ‘that’, are you fine inside?

Felt Sense

This is a physical feeling in your body. Invite to an issue or pick a problem. Since the ‘whole’ of the issue is in your body. Identify the unresolved edge, the fuzzy, murky, unclear or vague sense of the whole thing. The body’s response to ‘all that’ . Its meaning is not yet known.

Get A Handle

A method of keeping your attention on the felt sense. Find a word, phrase or image that fits the felt sense; for example, ‘knot in stomach’, or squeezing lump in throat, or heavy or tight or jittery. May include: body location, size, color, image, sound, or a gesture that describes the quality of the feeling.

Resonate

Go back and forth between the handle and the felt sense to get in exact match or right fit. Notice how your body feels (the physical sensation) when the handle matches the felt sense. Spend time with this feeling, with an attitude of friendly curiosity and respect.

Keep It Company

Spend some time with this feeling with an attitude of friendly curiosity and respect. Sense how it feels from its point of view. Let it know you hear it. See if it has something it wants to tell you.

Ask

Asking your body (the felt sense) what it knows. Use broad, open ended general questions what is this all about? What is the worst of this? What would it need to be okay? Be patient. Allow time for the body to respond.

Receive

You may experience a change in the felt sense, a physical release. Welcome the information that comes without judging, editing or analyzing. Let the response be the first step, not the ultimate answer.

The History of Focusing

“What is split off, not felt, remains the same. When it is felt, it changes. Most people don’t know this. They think that by not permitting the feeling of negative ways they make themselves good. On the contrary, that keeps those negatives static. The same from year to year . A few moments of feeling it in the body allows it to change. If there is in you something that is sick or unsound, let it inwardly be, and breathe. That’s the only way it can evolve and change into the form it needs.”

Eugene Gendlin – Developer of Focusing

During the early 1960s, Dr. Eugene Gendlin, a philosopher/psychologist at the University of Chicago, and Carl Rodgers the renowned humanist psychologist, researched the question why some people succeed in therapy while others fail. From intensive analysis of hundreds of therapy sessions, they found that the people who reached successful outcomes were those who naturally attended closely to the “felt sense” in their bodies as they worked in therapy.

The power of this inner attention was so great that researchers could actually predict who would succeed based on their behavior during the first two sessions! The people who succeeded were those that slowed down their speech, paid close attention to their vague inner bodily sensations and took the time to let the meaning of those sensations emerge. In contrast, the people who “stayed in their heads” analyzing their problems or who merely recalled and re-experienced certain emotions without tapping into their direct experience did not succeed in therapy. Based on these observations, Dr. Gendlin developed a system for teaching people how to do what the successful clients did and this process is called FOCUSING.